Prologue: From the outset, this title may lead one to think of the popular Perry Mason stories of Erle Stanley Gardner. But it bears little resemblance to Mr. Gardner’s mysteries. The characters here are not as wealthy or as sophisticated as those found in his yarns. This tale follows a criminal case I prosecuted during my career as a senior assistant district attorney. I offer the story for your reading enjoyment, owing to its unusual and, if it were not somewhat creepy, comical details.
* * *
“Thank you,” Gayla Boyd said to the court clerk. She turned and made her way past the uncertain faces of those waiting for help.
In the parking lot, she sat in her car and released a thankful sigh. The courthouse folks had been sympathetic. Everyone from the advocate who walked her through the process to the judge who ruled on her petition for the Temporary Protective Order helped her understand the procedure. She paid extra to have the document served on Tyrone Mondale, but now maybe she could get some peace. Mrs. Boyd looked forward to the day off to unwind.
After a quick stop at the supermarket, she drove home, contemplating what she had accomplished that morning. She’d taken care of a major complication in her life. Being a single mother of two active teenagers was no smooth road, even in the best of times. When an obsessive ex-boyfriend came into the mix, things became more difficult. Her thoughts drifted back over the events of the last seven or eight months.
Being a single mother of two active teenagers was no smooth road in the best of times.
* * *
Mondale had been different when they first met. He’d been considerate and affectionate to Gayla and great with her children. Sure, he didn’t have a job but said he was looking. Her boyfriend told her he was having a run of bad luck. By the time he lost his apartment, their relationship had advanced, She invited him to move in with her. A little over six months into the arrangement, her beau seemed to abandon the search for employment. Her housemate settled into living off Boyd’s income as a registered nurse.
Eventually, Mondale reached a point where he appeared to consider it his right to live in her home without contributing to the household. His lackadaisical attitude toward doing anything productive affected the woman’s son. Getting the boy to do his appointed chores required a serious confrontation between him and his mom. Even her teenage daughter started taking his side in matters. Gayla finally had had enough and told him to get out. They argued. The quarrels only stiffened her resolve; he needed to go.
After his departure, Tyrone’s constant phone calls, unexpected and unwanted appearances at the hospital and her front door became too much. Gayla suspected she’d heard him sneaking around outside her house several nights. Even the kids thought they’d noticed unusual noises in the yard occasionally. There are men who, finding a woman with a home and a decent job willing to let them into their life, are hard pressed to give up the gravy train. When Boyd talked to a girlfriend about her plight, she suggested getting a temporary court order from a judge to keep Mondale away from her.
* * *
In time, Mrs. Boyd eased her sedan into the driveway of her modest home. Inside, she put away the few grocery items she’d bought. Then, she settled onto the living room sofa with a glass of iced tea and a few magazines. As she flipped the pages, a low, unidentifiable noise came to Gayla from somewhere place in the house. She brushed it aside, thinking it might be the refrigerator or the air conditioning unit going through its routine.
A low, unidentifiable noise came to Gayla from somewhere in the house.
A few minutes later, there was another unfamiliar sound. This one, as the first, was just loud enough to gain her attention. Years ago, Boyd’s ex-husband had told her houses could produce odd noises here and there, caused by things like a foundation settling or temperature changes. She ignored the interruption and continued looking at the glossy magazine photographs.
The third such disturbance resulted in her unease. Her kids were in school and wouldn’t be home for another two or three hours. This time, she decided to investigate. Gayla set the periodical aside, rose, and guardedly climbed the stairs to the upper floor. Out of an abundance of caution, she called out her teenagers’ names. As expected, she received no response. It did little to ease her mind.
Gayla’s search of the second story showed nothing out of the ordinary. She smiled, thinking Mondale’s harassment had caused her to be more on edge than usual. After checking the kitchen and the small dining room and finding nothing, she returned to the sofa.
As she sat, another unidentifiable sound, one louder than the others, came to her after several minutes. Now, she became convinced somehow someone was in her home.
She moved slowly to the telephone in her bedroom and dialed 9-1-1. When the dispatcher answered, she quietly related what had happened. The operator said she would send a patrol unit at once. She advised the caller to wait outside for the police officer.
* * *
Ten minutes later, Gayla stood on her stoop as two patrol cars pulled to a stop in front of the residence. When the officers reached her, the homeowner explained what she’d heard and her concern for her and her children’s safety. They listened patiently and asked a few questions to better understand the facts as she saw them.
After the older officer, whose name tag read “Mangold,” told Gayla to stay outside, they entered her home. Mangold cleared the top level. The other lawman, named Andrews, checked the ground floor and the garage. He finished with a storage area, accessible from the garage and running its width at the rear of the house. Neither one found anything of note. There were no indications of forced entry. Nothing was out of place, as far as they could tell.
In the interim, a third policeman, a sergeant, arrived. This one, a field training officer named Toby Mathis, was a hulking, serious man. He spoke with the complainant and waited with her on the stoop. The new arrival radioed the others on his shoulder-mounted unit to make them aware of his presence.
Before going back outside, Andrews and Mangold met briefly in the kitchen and discussed the situation. The pair thought the homeowner might have mental issues, or she was “10-96” to put it in their code parlance.
Emerging, they greeted Sgt. Mathis with the news that they’d found nothing amiss. Despite their assurances, the resident was adamant that someone was somewhere in the home. She became upset and cried. Behind her, the two junior policemen rolled their eyes in disbelief and exasperation. Toby tried to calm her. He offered to go through the place himself while one of his colleagues remained with her.
After the sergeant went inside, the responding officers had a brief, quiet conversation among themselves. They were certain the Boyd woman had no reason to worry. Andrews stayed with Gayla, while Mangold returned to routine patrol duties.
Meanwhile, the senior cop cleared the upstairs, finding nothing. He got the same result on the first floor. Passing through the kitchen, Mathis opened the door to the garage, a space three steps lower than the main level. The thing was empty. He stepped into the storage room and turned on the lights before looking around. He found it to be as unnoteworthy as things had been throughout the home. A quick scan failed to yield anything of note. Just as he started to leave, though, something odd caught his eye.
He approached an empty, five-gallon plastic paint bucket turned upside down on the floor. The thing sat alone toward the far end of the storage space and looked out of place to the officer. It rested next to a five-foot-high concrete block wall, common to the back of the garage and the home’s first floor. Two-by-four studs topped the wall and climbed the rest of the way to the ceiling rafters, a total height of around nine feet. Batts of fiberglass insulation filled the spaces between the wooden uprights. Shining his flashlight in their vicinity, one section of the material appeared as if something had disturbed it.
On a hunch, he stepped up onto the paint can. Then he removed the insulation and dropped it. At that point, he shone the light into the opening. Mathis recognized that the space behind the studding was the void beneath the stairs leading to the house’s second floor. As the glow of his light swept across the cavity, the shocked officer saw a man standing inside, holding a broom. When the beam hit him, he began sweeping.
As the glow of his light swept across the cavity, the shocked officer saw a man standing inside, holding a broom.
“What the hell are you doing in there?” the sergeant demanded.
The stunned guy swallowed hard, gave a sheepish grin, and offered, “I’m just cleaning up.” He was a tall, thin fellow wearing a T-shirt and jeans.
“Drop that and get outta there!”
Initially, the guy refused. Sgt. Mathis radioed Officer Andrews about his situation and ordered him to his location at once. After instructing Gayla to stay on the stoop, the second cop ran to the storage area.
The intruder handed the broom to the uniformed man. Though the surface in the space was at the same level as the house’s first floor, the interloper stalled in making his way out. In frustration, the policeman grabbed his shirt and began pulling him up the wall.
Andrews arrived and helped extricate the struggling individual from his hiding place. The sergeant used the man’s belt to haul the top half of his body out of his niche. When the trespasser’s upper torso was over the wall, he reached to Toby’s side and tried to remove his service weapon from its holster. His attempt brought a swift and forceful response from the junior cop. Andrews applied a few strokes of persuasion with his asp baton to the man’s upper arm, forearm, and hand. The burglar yelped in pain, but resisted all the more.
After a strenuous effort, the two officers got him over the wall and deposited him facedown on the storage room’s floor. He continued to fight the pair, repeatedly swinging at them and screaming that he had a right to be there. They handcuffed the subdued burglar behind his back.
Andrews maintained control of their prisoner with a knee placed firmly on his lower spine. Meanwhile, Mathis stepped up onto the five-gallon bucket for a closer look at the area where the guy had been hiding. The senior officer saw where the interloper had ripped a heating-air conditioning line from its connection to a return opening. Based on its general location, he surmised it to be the ductwork for the the living room vent. Through the grille, a person could watch everything occurring in that space. The setting fit the story Mrs. Boyd had told him regarding where she had been when she’d heard the noises. But the questions remained: how and why had he broken into the home only to hide under the stairs?
Through the grille, a person could watch everything occurring in that space.
The sergeant stepped off the bucket, and they pulled the man to his feet. When he refused to walk, they more or less half-carried, half-dragged him into the garage, where Andrews raised the door. Then they took their arrestee outside.
“Tyrone!” the woman yelled as the men appeared at the side of the building. “What are you doing in my house?”
“Tell ‘em it’s okay, Gayla! I love you, baby!”
The shocked sergeant relinquished the prisoner to Officer Andrews, who placed him in the backseat of his patrol car. Mondale continued to scream at her and declare his innocence.
“Do you know this man?” Mathis asked as he approached the homeowner.
“Yes. Yes, I do,” she sighed. “He … he was my boyfriend for a while. He lived here for maybe six or seven months until I kicked him out. I–”
“Was he supposed to be in your house today? Did you invite him to come here?”
“No. I wouldn’t have, because I had to meet someone at the county courthouse this morning.”
Her comment aroused the sergeant’s curiosity, “At the courthouse?”
After staring at the still-screaming Tyrone sitting in the back of the police car for a second, Gayla’s eyes shifted to the sergeant. “Yes. I went to get a protective order against him. He’s been showing up here and where I work uninvited. He’s been harassing me, scaring me. So, the judge issued a TPO. Under these circumstances, I’m sure he hasn’t received the thing yet.”
“No,” Mathis chuckled faintly, “my guess is you’re right. Did you change the locks after he left?”
“No. I didn’t see the need since Mondale never had a key. I never gave him one.” After a pause, she concluded, “He must have come into the house some way while I was at the courthouse.”
“Well, there’s no sign of forced entry. So how could he have gotten inside?”
“Wait,” Gayla said after another moment. As the sergeant stood in stunned silence, the woman walked across the stoop to a potted plant sitting to one side. She lifted the planter slightly and removed a house key, holding it for the officer to see. “Well, it’s still where it always is for my kids to use after school when I’m at work.”
She lifted the planter slightly and removed a house key, holding it for the officer to see.
In as calm a voice as he could muster, he asked, “How long have you kept a key there, ma’am?”
“Since I started working again and my son and daughter were old enough to take care of themselves.”
“In the same place?” The woman nodded. “And for how long?”
“Almost five years now.”
“And did he know where you had the key hidden?” the cop inquired, nodding toward their prisoner.
“Yes, but he swore he’d never touch it. It was just for the kids.”
“Under the circumstances,” Toby asked, as gently as possible, “do you suppose he might have used it to unlock the door before putting it back under the pot? Based on what we’ve found, do you think you can put any store by his promise?”
The woman smiled awkwardly. “I guess not.”
Before he left, Sgt. Mathis got a written statement from Gayla to include in his report. Afterward, he strongly suggested she change her locks and find another, less obvious hiding place for her children’s key.
Epilogue: Confusion ensued when the police reports stated the perpetrator had been “located inside a wall” without explaining what the “wall” was. Between them, the prosecuting and defense attorneys clarified the facts of the case and prepared for trial. Mondale had prior convictions for various offenses. Here, he pled guilty to charges of Burglary, Stalking, Criminal Damage to Property, and several counts of Obstruction of an Officer just before they selected the jury. He was still protesting his innocence, claiming he’d done nothing wrong as they led him away to a term in prison. Whether Mrs. Boyd changed the locks and/or found a new secret location for her kids’ key is unknown. ©